Anu Kumari, All India Rank – 2 UPSC Civil Services Examination 2017

Detailed Strategy

Firstly, let me tell you. I did not have a plan when I started out. Rather I was full of insecurities, doubts and fears (only 2 attempts to give owing to age factors and the possibility of failure). Then, I picked bits and pieces from different people’s strategies. After going through peoples’ startegies, I tried to do what I felt were genuine and honest suggestion by them.

Further, different people have different backgrounds. Just to elaborate, I had working knowledge of Economics as I have done MBA Finance, so perhaps I was comfortable with Economy without reading 11th and 12th NCERTs or Ramesh Singh. I only did Sri Ram printed Economics notes . So, design your strategy accordingly.

First of all, I did not take any coaching for GS papers or for that matter my optional. But, I did join a test series for my optional Sociology at Nice IAS which helped me a lot and gave mock interviews at diff institutes.

For GS 4 ie Ethics, collected good quotes by Swami Vivekanand, Gandhi, Einstein, Mandela etc, made them my laptop wallpapaers. I put syllabus in front of me and ensured that I have understood n covered each and every topic, especially the definition of each and every word written there.

I reflected back on my entire life and made notes of the good things and the bad things that I had done in life and tried to use real life examples in my answers. (eg- a real life example of moral dilemma is when your friend is cheating in exams and copying from you- on the one hand, it helps my friend improve her marks, on the other hand, this is morally wrong) This exercise was a good self reflection exercise too that helped my understand myself better.

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